Tag Archives: memorial drive

It’s Time to Radically Rethink Memorial Drive in Cambridge

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Memorial Drive in Cambridge—a pleasure roadway and a park—is actually a death trap. The wide, straight roadway encourages cars to speed, and speed they do, running over a pedestrian several times per year and killing people far too often. The roadway hosts no commercial vehicles, and the eastbound lanes serve only a couple of boating facilities between the BU and Longfellow bridges, yet the roadway—which was designed for low-speed horses and carriages—is built as if it were a highway, and any efforts to improve pedestrian safety have been stonewalled in the name of keeping traffic moving.

Except for a couple of traffic lights and poor-visibility sidewalks, traffic can proceed unimpeded from the BU Bridge to East Cambridge, on a straight, flat, mostly divided highway, where the 35 mph speed limit is honored in the breach. It’s no fun to walk across and only slightly more fun to walk or bike along. Officially, it’s a park, but it doesn’t seem like one.

Memorial Drive is part of the Charles River Basin park and there is a 2002 master plan for the basin. Portions of this plan have been implemented, including the new paths along the Cambridge side of the river, but the roadways have not been touched. (Believe it or not, until the 1990s, parking was allowed on both barrels of Memorial Drive, so there was even more pavement on Mem Drive east and a line of cars along the river.) The plan proposes narrowing the road slightly and moving the eastbound barrel inland from the river, slightly increasing the width of the park along the river. It says that other options were considered, but not advanced further in to the plan. One of these would have eliminated the eastbound roadway entirely, channeling all traffic on to the combined westbound barrel. Apparently removing the roadway would be incongruous with the historic nature of the roadway:

While there is some flexibility in applying
preservation criteria, the historic value of this cultural landscape would
be entirely lost under this alternative.

I call shenanigans. I don’t remember Frederick Law Olmsted planning for two lanes of 40 miles per hour automobile traffic in each direction, and parking. I think the DCR is afraid of reducing the number of lanes on the roadway. Rather than focusing on what the road looks like today, what if the DCR prioritized what would best serve as parkland for the public?

Instead of trying to rebuild the highway-like park (or is it a park-like highway) let’s consider moving traffic to the westbound lanes. Use this roadway for two lanes of traffic, turning lanes at intersections, pedestrian refuges between the lanes to minimize crossing distances and some parking where needed (and charge for it if you can’t figure out how to pay for the roadway changes). At the same and the eastbound lanes can be converted to parkland, increasing green space and allowing us to reclaim the dead space in between the current roadway. It might not match his parkway, but it would create a Cambridge esplanade. I think old Frederick Law would be proud.

There is an 80-foot-wide median between the two barrels of Memorial Drive today, but this is lost parkland, since it is nearly impossible to access and cut off from both MIT and the river, and who really wants to sit in a park in the middle of a highway anyway? If the roadway were consolidated, it the amount of useful parkland would go from 40 feet wide to 145 feet wide. On the MIT side, the portion of the parkland between the road and the sidewalk isn’t even grass, but instead wood chips and mud, since it receives heavy pedestrian use, so the road could actually be pushed north there. This would provide enough room for one lane of traffic in each direction, left turn bays on and off of Memorial Drive where needed, and parking spaces elsewhere. By using part of this space, no trees would be impacted (which would be the case of the roadway were moved south).

But only one lane for cars in each direction? Yes! Memorial Drive in Cambridge carries about 36,000 vehicles per day. While this is high for a single lane in each direction, it is not without precedent, especially for a roadway with few intersections or interruptions. In fact, the DCR has a very similar stretch of roadway with a single lane in each direction which carries the same number of vehicles a few miles west: Nonantum Road, along the river in Brighton and Newton. Most notably, this roadway used to have four lanes but, according to the same master plan, was reduced to two in 2010, yet with turning lanes, traffic throughput has not decreased. The new design allowed room for an expanded bicycle/pedestrian path alongside as well.

These two roadway designs carry the same number of vehicles.

2007:
2018:
The 2002 master plan is dated, but it provides a blueprint for improving Memorial Drive. The DCR and MIT have started to implement some improvements, but these are small steps. It’s time that Cambridge had an esplanade along the river, not a strip of parkland and a wide highway.

Call to Action: Protect Riverbend Park from DCR Overreach

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Since 1975, Memorial Drive in Cambridge has been closed to cars every Sunday from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m., transforming in to Riverbend Park. Originally the idea of a neighbor in Cambridge Isabella Halsted, it is one of the oldest such continual “open streets” events in the country, and it is enjoyed by thousands of residents from across the Commonwealth every week, who can have eight quiet hours to walk along the river without the constant din of automobile traffic.

Except the DCR doesn’t seem to like it. Columnists have noted in the past that they often let cars on to the road before the closure officially ends. The city has requested that the closings continue year-round, but to no avail. DCR is required to close the roadway to traffic by statute passed in 1985, but they do the bare minimum.

There is a condition in that statute, which is that:

the [DCR] may at its discretion suspend
any authorized closings, if in the judgement of said commission such
authorized closing poses a threat to public safety and should any
emergency arise in which said commission in its judgement deems it
necessary to alter the authorized closure.

This is sensible. If there were, for example, a fire along the roadway which required response, or if Soldiers Field Road was closed for repairs, we’d want the DCR to have the authority to open it to traffic. But this summer, the DCR is taking a different tack. With the closure of some lanes of the Turnpike for a construction project, MassDOT is worried that there might be some traffic in the area. They asked DCR to suspend the closure. Traffic is not a threat to public safety—if it were, Boston would be unsafe every day from 6 a.m. to 7 p.m. (longer if the Sox are in town)—but the DCR rolled over and said “sure, we’ll close it, what do we care?”

They may not care, but we do. DCR may not realize it, but this is important to many residents of Cambridge, Boston and the Commonwealth as a whole. They need to hear from us, and from our legislators. If you use Riverbend Park on Sundays—if you’ve taught your kid to ride a bike there, or walked along the river there, or ridden a Hubway there, or drawn in chalk there, or simply enjoyed the quiet along the riverbank there—it’s time to take action. Here’s how:

  1. Contact your legislator. If you don’t already know your Senator and Representative, you can find your legislator here. (Here are maps of districts, you can find a zoomed-in map of House districts here and Senate districts here). Remember to contact your own representatives first. They represent you.Here is a sample letter to write; feel free to customize it and remember to be polite, concise and specific.

    Dear Sen ___ and Rep ___,

    You may have seen a recent Globe article that the DCR plans to close Riverbend Park in Cambridge for two weekends this summer.

    This is unacceptable. Statute stipulates that DCR may only authorize such a suspension of the park if there is a “threat to public safety”. It is hard to fathom how a construction project on a separate roadway in Boston constitutes such a threat.

    Riverbend Park has been a part of Cambridge for 40 years, and I visit the park with my family every weekend to experience the riverbank without the constant drone of nearby traffic. I do not support this suspension. I would ask that you reach out to DCR and demand that they rescind this suspension immediately.

    Thank you,

    Your name
    Your address
    Your telephone/email
    Ask specifically that they follow up with you and let you know what they have found.

  2. Contact the DCR. Your state tax dollars pay for the DCR’s work. Let them know you’re unhappy. The contact for these announcements is Mark Steffen, and his email is Mark.A.Steffen@state.ma.us. Better yet, give him a call: 617-360-1715. His phone should be ringing off the hook. Contact the DCR in general as well, and remember, be firm but polite. If the DCR feels that the public is behind them, they may be more willing to change their minds. Remember, phone calls are better than emails, but both are good.
  3. Contact MassDOT. They are the ones who have made this unreasonable request in the first place. According to the project page, the best contact is James Kersten at 857-368-9041. His phone shouldn’t stop ringing on Monday, either.
  4. Contact the Governor. Again, calling is better than email. Don’t take too much of their time, but make sure to explain yourself and your position. The DCR works for the Governor. If they hear from enough of us, they might be able to make a call to turn this around. Here’s their number: 617.725.4005.
  5. If you live in Cambridge, contact the city council. You can email all of your councilors at council@cambridgema.gov. Note that the council has already asked that Riverbend Park be extended year-round, so they’re on our side, but it’s good for them to hear from their constituents about it. You can also contact the city manager to ask that he take action as well: 617-349-4300.
Obviously, wait until Monday to call. Get a message? Call again. The squeaky wheel gets the grease. It’s time to be squeaky.

Is this small potatoes compared with abhorrent policy on the federal level? Yes. But in Massachusetts, we don’t have much say beyond calling our legislators and asking they fight the good fight. As Cambridge’s own Tip O’Neill often said: all politics is local. Your voice matters. Your voice can be heard.

Who should pay to plow DCR paths? How about the DCR?

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Once again, Twitter has reminded us about the inequities of transportation funding: for the severalth year in a row, New Balance is paying to plow the Charles River esplanade paths along the river in Boston. While there’s nothing wrong with this per se—and it may be marketing New Balance is happy to pay for—it shows where our priorities lie. The DCR—which stands for Department of Conservation and Recreation, if you’ve forgotten—has no problem finding the money to plow the roadways which provide transportation along the Esplanade. But when it comes to the pedestrian and cycling paths, they cry poor and make someone else come up with the money.

This is similar to the reaction over the rebuilding of Greenough Boulevard along the river. Everyone was over the moon that the Solomon Foundation had come up with the money to repurpose the roadway from four lanes to two, and to fix an entirely substandard portion of the path there. Yet no one bothered to ask: why do we need a private foundation to fund work the DCR should be doing anyway? The DCR didn’t get a foundation to pay for the guardrail replacement along Storrow Drive, nor did they go looking for a handout from Ford, GM or Toyota. There was a safety issue, and they paid to fix it. They’re happy to do that for roadways, but cry poor when it comes to paying for non-motorized use.

This page has also pointed out that the DCR could recoup hundreds of thousands of dollars a year by monetizing the parking along Memorial Drive near Kendall Square, yet this resource sits fallow. Perhaps next year we could take some of this money to clear the sidewalks, and New Balance could make a donation instead to buy running shoes for students in Boston Public Schools. That would be a more appropriate use of their funds.

Otherwise, I’ll be heartened when I see a Tweet that the DCR announces that, thanks to donations from Ford Motor Company, they’ll be clearing snow off of Storrow and Memorial Drives during the winter, rather than just closing them down whenever snow falls. I expect I’ll be waiting a while for that.